150th Anniversary of the Battle of Antietam

Sept 17th 1862. The bloodiest day in US History.

Of the 23,000 casualties, 3600 were dead. And we all know that back in that era, a significant number of the wounded would linger on for weeks or months till they too died.

General McClellan's handling of the battle was horrible. He could have won the battle early on (and wiped out General Lee while doing it) just by handling some basic staff work prior to the fight.
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I walked these grounds 11 years ago. It was late October and I was by myself. I swear you could feel eyes on you,

A.P. Green on that bridge made a famous stand.

May All RIP....

 

So many were lost in this bloody war....it is hard for modern day people to understand how we could divide ourselves to accomplish this bloodbath....I hope we use it's memory to remember it is still possible..........if we fail to peacefully solve our differences. Is it lost upon us that a good number of reasons given for this war, actually were not solved until later years and even so there may be a few conditions that have never been completely solved?

 

"The landscape turned red".

Not an exaggeration. I think only one or two WW1 battlefields had as much death per square meter in as such a short amount of time.

 

I was there in 1985.

 

Is that true?? What about WW1? i think Australia has lost 8000 and 12000 in one day...England probably similar...

 

Remember they were using muzzle loading single shot weapons w/bayonets supported by muzzle loading short ranged cannons then, unlike in WW1 when semi-automatic rifles and fully automatic machine guns supported by rapid fire artillery and strafing aircraft. Still that was a lot of men killed and wounded in such a fashion in 12 hours.

 

On the first day of the Somme 19, 240 British & Commonwealth soldiers died and around 38,000 were wounded, CAC.

 

While there were certainly bloodier battles fought throughout history, Anteitam remains the bloodiest for Americans. The Somme was quite brutal, but didn't include any US forces.

 

"To mark the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Antietam - the bloodiest single day in American military history - photographer Todd Harrington has retraced the steps of ground-breaking Civil War photographer Alexander Gardner.
Photographic history changed forever at Antietam, as Gardner did something no one had done before and turned the lens on the grim reality of war - dead soldiers awaiting burial.
Present-day photographer Harrington was set a brief to capture the same scenes, minus the bodies of fallen soldiers, to document how the landscapes have changed.

To make the process as authentic as possible, Harrington used the same type of equipment that Gardner had used 150 years ago, a stereo wet plate camera and glass plates.
As these stunning photographs show, it turns out not all that much has changed. The land surrounding the historic battle site has been beautifully preserved, save for some modern elements such as telephone lines and paved roads."
Same camera, different century: Stunning pictures that retrace the steps of ground-breaking Civil War photographer, 150 years later | Mail Online

 

What gets me is you had 23,000 casualties on one day.The next day everyone just went home....

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/archive/1/1b/20110328194835%21Antietam_Overview.png

 

Not exactly. Rear guard actions while the Army of Northern Virginia withdrew across the Potomac River to safety in Virginea took place at Shepardstown (19 Sept) and cavalry skirmishes that contributed to discouraging McClellan from pursuing Lee went on until early November. At that point Lee's Maryland Campaign was considered closed. Things were quiet for the most part until the carnage continued during the Fredricksburg Campaign in December (11-15) of the same year. And then the war drug on for 2 1/2 more bloody years.

Since we are talking about anniversaries, today is the anniversary of the Battle of Chickamauga, Georgia (19-20 Sept 1863). It was the last hurrah for the Confederacy. From this point on it would be a long string of bitter and a few Pyrrhic victories until Appomattox.

 

Although I concede up front these things are unanswerable when we consider these large casualty numbers accomplished by enemies at war......I am unable to keep myself from wondering what the result for society would have been, if all these numbers had remained at home in productive work with their families building their communities etc. Of course when evil threatens we have no choice but to fight, but how necessary it is to exhaust all means of settling differences short of war if possible. Each of these lives was also lost to a family of some kind, a community of some kind, possibly a parish, possibly a school. Once you use this multiplier effect you begin to comprehend what "casualty" really means. It is visited upon the survivors in so many ways besides the personal suffering.

 

And for the most part, left the dead on the field of battle. There was no GRS during the Civil War.

 

Excellent Photos...

150 Years Ago Today - Sept 17 1862 - Antietam - 23,000 Americans killed/injured - Telecaster Guitar Forum